The Birth of a God

The origin to the being that would become the Goddess Vordea.

Demhe Station, 30 Years Before The End (BTE)

A woman in an Admiral's uniform sat at a desk in a mostly plain metal room. Ostensibly, she was the Fleet Admiral of the United Navy of Humanity. Not that the title had had any meaning for more than a billion years. As far as they knew, Demhe Station was the last bastion of life left in the entire universe, a sprawling space station nearly a thousand kilometres across.

The only power she still held was as the last remaining vestige of law and order in the universe. Even so, she was still the Fleet Admiral, as the placard on her desk stated.

Fleet Admiral Mira Frost

Even as she read the reports on her computer, she frowned. Entropy, the foe humanity had been fighting for untold quadrillions of years, was winning. The latest estimates gave them maybe 70 years of useful work left out of all the material that remained on Demhe.

"If we reduce oxygen levels another 10%, maybe 72 years." She muttered. She sighed.

What was the point?

They were the last generation of humanity. The universe had gone cold trillions of years before any of them were born. Stars were a long forgotten myth. The station's engines had been cannibalised a hundred million years ago after they entered a stable orbit with a black hole. Even the black hole was almost gone now.

Mira liked to stand in the observatory and look at the black hole sometimes. The records called it Carcosa.

A ping came at the door.

"Enter." Mira stated, her voice crisp and authoritative even in the face of oblivion.

The door slid open silently, and a man wearing a white uniform entered, holding a metal clipboard.

"Admiral this is going to sound insane, but-" He paused.

Mira raised an eyebrow. She motioned for him to continue.

"Sorry. The long range sensors are picking up a ship." He handed the clipboard over to Mira.

Mira glanced at the contents. An automated freighter. Several million years old if the data was accurate.

"How long ago was this detected?" Mira asked.

"Roughly four days. The handshake protocols had to be retrieved from the deep galleries. We're trying to get a docking bay online for its arrival."

Mira nodded. The idea of useful supplies aboard a freighter this old was laughable, but if nothing else the metal of the ship itself could be used. They certainly needed the spare computing capacity, that much was certain.

"Blow the ceiling of one of the dead greenhouses on the outer rim if the docking rings won't co-operate." Mira stated. "Not like we need them anymore."

The man nodded, gave Mira a salute, and left. His boots clacked on the corridor as Mira sat and thought.

Five Days Later, Docking Ring 9879-G

The ancient docking clamps groaned as they moved for the first time in many years. The station vibrated for a moment as the freighter made its final arrival, and a hiss sounded as the doors slid open to reveal its contents.

Station Marines swept the interior of the freighter first. Mira said they could never be too safe, and ordered combat armour to be donned just in case the automated security systems didn't recognise them as human.

The freighter's manifest was downloaded, and Mira's eyes nearly bulged out of her head. Uranium-238!

"Send this to the boys in fission immediately." Mira said, clearing her throat. "We got a few thousand kilograms of Uranium on this bastard, accounting for radioactive decay."

Deciding to check the data system, Mira encountered something strange. A folder that was labelled Project Apotheosis. After glancing over the introduction, it seemed impossible, but she had to be sure.

"Get a copy of the freighter's data to the scientists in the biological labs. There's a time waster in here that'll give them something to do."

Something still tugged at Mira's mind as she stepped back into Demhe Station. Where did this freighter come from? Who dispatched it?

The station's HVAC system hummed in response.

Biological Labs

"Admiral, good to see you." One of the scientists said with a smile. "We've started to look at it a bit, but-"

He gestured at the computers.

"It's nonsense. To create a God?" He finished, shaking his head.

"Doctor Freitag." Mira said warmly, placing a hand on his shoulder. "What do we have to lose?"

"Mira, you're letting me waste precious power on this... fool's errand?" He asked with some concern.

"Ah, of course. You don't know yet." Mira pulled out a tablet and handed it to the Doctor. "Adam, look how much Uranium-238 was on that freighter."

Adam gasped. "Admiral, do I have permission to-"

"Every available computing resource. Deep galleries are already online, the far galleries are getting powered up. We have enough power to increase oxygen levels back to 20 percent."

"I understand now." Adam said with a hearty laugh.

"Get to work. That's an order." Mira winked.

25 Years Before The End (BTE)

Mira, Adam, and several other scientists stood around a tank filled with liquid. Inside a fetus floated, eyes closed.

"So is this it?" Mira asked, gesturing at the tank.

"Her." Adam corrected. "But yes. Her final genetic makeup is still unstable, in fact. Look."

Adam typed and clicked, bringing up a graph on the monitor next to the tank. Even as they watched, they continued to change, but the last one caught Mira's eye.

"Unknown?"

"Frankly we're not sure what it is, Admiral." Adam admitted. "Did we ever figure out where that freighter came from?"

Mira glanced around for a moment, as if the secret still mattered. "It was launched before the long night. Somebody pointed it at the co-ordinates where Demhe Station would be... over half a dozen centillion years ago. We checked the logs. There was a picture of the launch site in the data banks."

She paused.

"There was... a star."

She turned back to look at the tank.

"Have you thought of a name?" Adam asked.

"Me?"

"You approved this little project. You're basically her mother."

Mira stood in front of the tank with her arms crossed for some time, frowning.

Adam was right.

She hated that.

"How about... Vordea?" Mira eventually said.

"Vordea? It has a nice ring to it." Another scientist said.

Adam nodded. "Vordea it is. The final gasp of a dead universe."

Mira laughed. "I'll drink to that."

The graphs flickered in response, as if Vordea was responding to being named.

Read Out:

Human: 50.1%

Squid: 35.67%

Unknown: 14.23%

They never noticed when it stopped changing. They might have panicked if they had.